Notes from the House of the Dead was published and the American Civil War was in its second year. He wasn’t in it. Never got to America and I don’t think he ever wanted to. Baden-Baden; gambling; that’s what he liked. I’ve been reading his second wife’s reminiscences of their fourteen years together. His first wife died of TB. He also lost two children and a favorite brother. Jesus, what a life. A lot of what she writes about is his gentleness and thoughtfulness and empathy and compassion and his love for her and she for him. She worshiped him. Before I fell asleep I finished the part where Dostoevsky died. So he’s dead. He’s really dead. What an awful thing to consider. I doubt I’ll be able to get back to sleep tonight.” “Do you want to hold me from behind?” “Yes, that might help. Thank you.” …“Rosalind, Daddy, Mommy’s sick again,” Maureen shouts. “Call 911.” …Gwen and he have just made love. He gets off her. She says “I can’t believe it.” “Can’t believe what?” he says. “That this is how we produced our two daughters and now they’re both over twenty-one. A miracle; two miracles. And that we’re still going at it after so long could be considered another miracle. How was our lovemaking, though?” “At the count of three,” he says, “or just now?” “How would I know?” she says. …He’s at a cemetery with his sister and Gwen. Some men are digging at his parents’ gravesite. His father’s coffin is lifted out of the grave by the men and pried open with crowbars and shovels. He looks in the coffin. His father, in a fetal position, looks the same after being buried for more than thirty years. Not even dirt on him, he thinks, and his clothes look as if they were just put on. “Okay,” he says to the gravediggers. “I’ve seen what I came here to see. You can nail it up and let him down again.” His sister says “No, you can’t re-bury him. I swear I see some movement in his chest.” “But look,” he says, “his eyes are shut, his face is perfectly at peace and he hasn’t eaten for close to thirty-five years. How can he be alive?” “If you ask that, why not ask how he could have a heartbeat? Because he has one. Don’t deny it. You can see it as well as I.” He looks closer at his father’s chest. It’s moving up and down, up and down. “That’s not a heart beating,” he says. “That’s his lungs going in and out, in and out. Gwen,” he says, turning around to her, “you know everything about everything. Tell us who’s right.” …He walks into a room, looks around for his wallet, and sees Gwen’s head on a chair. “Oh, no,” he says, and a man behind him says “If you cry, and I’m not saying ‘cry out,’ we’ll cut off your head too.” The man’s dressed in black and has a watchman’s cap pulled down over his face, with slits in it for his eyes. “Though we will spare your mother,” the man says. “Because of her age and infirmities and that no one should think we’re entirely disrespectful.” “But my wife was infirm too. Three strokes in two years. She was on a respirator the last month of her life. How could you do this to her? She was so goddamn sweet and good-natured to everyone. Ah, kill me already, you bastards. What do I care, now that she’s gone?” He pushes the man aside and goes into a bedroom to look for his wallet. An ex-girlfriend’s tied to a chair, her mouth gagged. “She’s next,” the man says. “Then your wife again, then you.” “Why? What is it with you guys that you can’t let them live in peace? What’d either of them ever do that could be considered wrong, except once know me? Oh, Christ, what people never stop doing to each other.” And he drops to his knees and bangs his forehead on the floor and keeps banging it till he passes out. …“This was the most important thing I could tell you,” Gwen says to him. “But you were either too busy with your work or indifferent to my needs to pay attention, or you simply didn’t bother to listen, even if you had to have seen how much it meant to me.” “Not true,” he says. “I just must’ve forgot. Tell me it again. Then repeat it three times, one after the other. That’s how I’ll remember.” “I want to commit suicide.” “I won’t let you. And there’s no way you’d be able to find the strength to do it alone. You need my help and I won’t give it.” “I can starve myself to death,” and he says “Then I’ll force-feed liquids and food down your gullet.” “I’ll clench my mouth shut to stop anything from coming in,” and he says “I’ll find some way to pry it apart. You’re staying alive, by hook or crook. It’ll be worth it to you, I promise. If anything, do it for me?” “Please,” she says, “I beg you to help me kill myself, or at least not stop me.” “By hook, by crook, by God, no. I’m keeping you alive and that’s the last we’ll talk of it.” …He goes into work at a convenience store. The owner, who’s Chinese, says “How many hours you planning to put in today?” and he says “As many as you want. I’m here for the duration.” He gets behind the sales counter and rings up a pack of cigarettes. God, I didn’t know they were so expensive, he thinks. And they end up killing you. That’s ridiculous. Two boys run out of the store with sodas and candy bars they didn’t pay for. “Stop, thieves,” he yells. “Be right back,” he says to another customer, who put a carton of milk and bag of doughnuts on the counter, and runs after the boys. He looks both ways on the street, but they’re gone. Kids are so fast, he thinks. I used to be fast too. He goes back to the store and gets behind the counter and opens the bag to count the doughnuts. The owner comes over and says “You intentionally let those young punks get away. Do you realize what this petty thievery’s costing me? Get your things and get the hell out of here.” “But I need the job; something to do.” “Too bad.” He walks out of the store with a Chinese co-worker. “I’m seventy-one,” he says. The co-worker pats his shoulder and says “Boring; boring.” “My wife died this year.” “That, too, is boring.” …Gwen’s sitting up in bed, drinking tea. He says to her “Your principal caregiver called and said she’s been diagnosed with stage-three cancer and can’t come work for you anymore.” “The poor dear; such a fine lady and so good to me. How I’ll miss her. She’s all alone and doesn’t have any money saved. Who’ll take care of her when she starts falling, and now who’ll take care of me?” “I will, although now full-time.” “You? I want to laugh — with all my recent setbacks, I’d like to find something funny — so don’t tempt me.” “But I will take care of you, much more than I have, I promise. Till the rest of our lives together or whoever dies first.” “Go away and let me grieve for her and myself. This has been quite a blow.” “You’ll see,” he says, and takes her empty mug and leaves the room. …He’s around eighteen and lying in the upper bunk of the bunk bed in what they call the boys’ room. Gwen’s sleeping in the lower bunk. He reaches under his pillow for his alarm clock and looks at it. It’s one-thirty in the afternoon. How can that be? he thinks. The window shades are up and there’s bright sunshine in the room and he’s never slept past noon. “Damn,” he says, “I was supposed to get up at eight for an important makeup test in history. Now I’ll flunk the course. If I do, I won’t be able to graduate this term and start college in September. That’ll put me a half year behind — that is, if I pass the history test next fall. If I fail that one too, or even sleep through it again, I’ll be a full year behind and maybe won’t ever get into college because of all the times I failed and missed the test. All because this freaking alarm clock didn’t go off,” and he smashes it against the bunk rail and throws it to the floor. “Shh,” Gwen says. “It’s still early. Let me sleep.” …He and Gwen and a couple of their friends are sitting in a theater watching what he’ll call an acrobatic dance company on stage. The dancers are all young and very trim and wearing tight skimpy bottoms and nothing on top. Looking at the women’s breasts should be somewhat exciting for him, he thinks, but for some reason it isn’t. The entire troupe has turned itself into what looks like a wagon wheel — three of them as the rim and four as spokes. It moves around in circles, bumps into several objects and almost rolls off the stage into the orchestra pit, and then the spokes fall off and the rim breaks apart and the seven of them leap to their feet and hold hands and bow to the audience. There’s lots of applause. “That was amazing,” he says to Gwen. “What people, when they’re working together harmoniously, are able to shape themselves into. They looked and acted just like an out-of-control wagon wheel. I bet, though, they’ve fallen off the stage a few times and had other accidents, especially when they were first trying out that routine, and got plenty of bruises.” She points to the stage and he looks. Another dancer, or acrobat — he really doesn’t know what to call them — steps out of a large black box four of the others carried onto the stage with exaggerated difficulty and set down. He’s much bigger and older and heavier than the others and not even as muscular as any of the women. He kind of looks like me, he thinks. In fact, it is me. “Look, I’m part of the company,” he says to Gwen. “About to dance or do acrobatics and make an utter fool of myself. But don’t look too closely at my belly. I’ve a huge beer gut and it’s much hairier than it normally is. To tell you the truth, I look disgusting and ridiculous, compared to the others, and I can’t imagine what use I’d have for them up there.” She puts her finger over her lips and turns to the stage. The tallest of the other men climbs up the front of him as if climbing a robe ladder and stands on his shoulders. Then another man climbs up him the same way and stands on that man’s shoulder. Then two men grab an arm and leg each of one of the women and faster and faster swing her back and forth a few times and throw her onto the shoulders of the man on top. Then the tallest woman climbs up him and the two men and woman as if she’s climbing a much longer rope ladder and stands on the shoulders of the woman. Then the shortest woman — she can’t be more than five-one, and very slim but solid — climbs up him and the two men and women the same rope-ladder way and stands on the shoulders of the woman on top. Then this tower of performers — maybe that’s what it’s supposed to be, he thinks: the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or another famous tower but one he’s unfamiliar with — sways from side to side and nearly falls over but rights itself just a few feet before it would have hit the ground. The tower’s so tall that the head of the woman on top is obscured by the overhead of the proscenium. Then this woman dives into the outstretched arms of the two remaining men standing below. The next woman also dives into their arms, and the two men and women still on top of him jump off at the same time, land on their hands and immediately backflip to their feet. Then all eight performers bow and blow kisses to the audience. There’s even more applause than before. “Now I know what my purpose was on stage,” he says to Gwen, who’s still applauding though everyone else has stopped. “It’s that I’m sturdy enough to support a tower of people on my shoulders and keep it from crashing to the ground. How I did it, I don’t know. But I did a good job, didn’t I? …He opens his eyes. It’s dark out; must be around 3 a.m., he thinks. Turns to Gwen in bed and says “You up? I just want to warn you. There’s an unmistakable smell of death in the room. I recognize it from when my parents died. It has to be the cat. She’s been sick and getting worse the last three days. I should’ve taken her back to the vet when you told me to. Now I’ll be sorry the rest of my life.” He turns on his light, gets out of bed and looks for the cat. She’s not on the floor near the TV where she’s been lying quietly for two days. He looks under the bed; not there either, and the dish of water and plate of kibble he set by her last night don’t seem to have been touched. He puts on his bathrobe because his daughters might be home and goes around the house looking for the cat, saying “Here, little baby; here, little baby. Come to me, come to me,” and finds her at her food bowl in the kitchen. “So, you all right?” he says. She keeps eating. “You’re all right. Good.” …He and his best friend are standing outside his apartment in the East Village. He has a party to go to and wants his friend to come along. “I’m sure the host won’t mind if I bring you.” “No can do,” his friend says. “I have to be on call at the hospital early tomorrow and it’s a twelve-hour shift. But I’ve got me a gut feeling you’re gonna meet your future wife there. Have fun,” and his friend goes down the entrance to the Astor Place subway station. He starts walking downtown to the party. He talks to himself as he walks: “Be honest now, you really don’t want to go to the party. Instead of meeting your future wife or even a future bedmate, you’ll stand by yourself all evening, have too much to eat and drink because you’re so uncomfortable, and then tell the host what a great time you had and wonderful people you met, and the conversations — oh, they were the most stimulating and interesting you’ve had in a dog’s age — and leave. Turn around. Go home or stop off at your favorite bar for a couple of ales, and then go home,” and he turns around, turns around again and continues walking to the party. “Nice night,” he says. “Well, at least something’s good. Not warm or cold; just right. Sweater weather.” He likes that: “Sweater weather. Sweat her, wet her.” He goes through Chinatown, then Little Italy, thinks of stopping at an Italian pastry shop for a cannoli or almond macaroon horn, then says “Nah, you came this far, get there, and there’